by Adel Beshara
A slight variation of this theory was put forward by the pan-Arab man of letters Abdullah al-Alayili. He placed Sa’adeh’s execution in the context of British-French rivalry in the Near East, arguing that it was the upshot of:
A sinister French current that emerged from an Anglo-Latin – or British-French – rivalry. For as long as Sa’adeh was around the potential for a Greater Syria was always present. It was this factor which led to his death. The British formed the first post-independence government from Beshara el-Khoury and Riad as-Solh and snubbed anyone who dared to challenge this Anglo-Saxon strategy. But Beshara el-Khoury and the primary regime ideologue, Michel Shiha, and others soon deserted to the Latin-French position. They did all that they could possibly do in order to weaken the British position so that the Latin current would grow. This current then turned on the Syrian National Party taking its leader as a symbol of its strategy.33
Others stress the alleged role played by French financial and strategic interests in backing the Zaim coup, claiming that Sa’adeh’s destruction was orchestrated or tacitly supported by the French for nefarious reasons relating to the stalled Bank al-Isdar deal and other financial agreements.34 Another motive frequently attributed to France was its supposed objection to the formation of a Greater Syria under Sa’adeh’s leadership and British sponsorship.35 Although British governments reiterated the argument that they did not have any vested interest in a Greater Syria, they were never able to sway French opinion, which explains why the French, when they had the mandate over Lebanon and Syria, incessantly rebuked Sa’adeh as a British agent.
There were unquestionably many people in the government in Paris at the time who would have been delighted to see Sa’adeh disappear. Their hostility toward him had been reflected in a number of decisions during the Mandate era, which became a serious irritant in relations between the SNP leader and authorities. The idea of French complicity in Sa’adeh’s execution is tempting also since France exercised considerable influence over Zaim: “All the Western powers, for different reasons, looked with favor on the new regime in Damascus. The French saw in it an opportunity to consolidate their influence in the Arab East and spared no effort in persuading other countries to recognize the new regime. One of Za’im’s first acts as prime minister was to sign a currency agreement which ushered in a new era of improved understanding and close economic cooperation between Syria and France.”36 The argument flowing from this is that France persuaded Zaim to ditch Sa’adeh in order to retain the Syrian leader as a bulwark against a Greater Syria and, concomitantly, to protect its interests and influence in its former mandatories from the SSNP.
We will not know with any certainty if France was directly involved in the Sa’adeh affair until the French official records are open to researchers, and even then we may never know for sure. Many things are undoubtedly unrecorded and unknowable. At this point we are not even sure exactly what the French did. They have published no useful clarification to date, and Syrian accounts disclose no tangible details, as opposed to suppositions, about France’s complicity. Certainly, the explanation is highly plausible in view of France’s undeniable meddling in Syrian affairs, profound interest in Zaim’s regime, and its animosity toward Sa’adeh. However, as with all other cases, we need to know more. At this point, we can neither prove nor disprove that the French were complicit in the plot against Sa’adeh and, if so, what exactly they did to influence Zaim.
2. Israel and the United States
The most popular candidates in the conspiracy theories surrounding Sa’adeh’s downfall are Israel and the United States. This theory could be plausibly constructed as follows: Sa’adeh’s vehement anti-Israeli rhetoric, particularly after the proclamation of the State of Israel in 1948, and his vociferous call for armed struggle against the nascent state brought him to the attention of the Israeli leadership, which then fomented the plot to kill him, by intrigue or force.37 This was done, so the argument goes, either with the consent of the United States or its active cooperation.
There is no need here to elaborate on Sa’adeh’s attitude towards Israel. This has been convincingly and amply done by other writers.38 Suffice it to say that Sa’adeh rejected the Israeli entity and regarded its destruction as a national duty. He wrote extensively on the Palestine issue, with occasional bursts of theoretical creativity, and pursued the matter to the end. His commentaries bravely exposed worrying trends about the state of thinking amongst the local political leadership and provided inspiration in a time of gloom and darkness.39 Sa’adeh also matched his words with deeds: he started a concerted campaign of awareness about Palestine; he sought without success to obtain arms and ammunition; he set up a local militia and instructed the military officers in his party to enlist volunteers to fight in Palestine; and he put forward creative ideas on how to conduct the battle against the Zionist state and its Western allies.40 One such idea, for which he has not been given credit, concerns the value of oil as an international weapon:
From the mere ratification of the American Tapline Agreement it has become clear that we have not used this oil weapon to put a limit to US support of the Jews in Lausanne, Palestine and the United Nations. We have allowed the United States to go on supporting the Jews and sanctioned its actions by ratifying an important sensitive agreement of vital importance to it in relation to future military operations.41
In’am Raad has sophisticatedly used these events to construct a plausible-sounding theory on the execution. Sa’adeh, he claims, was killed by an organized conspiracy involving the United States, Zionism and Arab reaction as part of a concerted campaign to remove anyone perceived to be remotely a danger to the status quo in the region and to Israel’s existence in particular.42 There is at least one piece of evidence to support this theory. It comes from Jam’a, a former officer in the Syrian Intelligence. Jam’a has claimed that the plot against Sa’adeh was hatched during a spate of secret meetings between US Assistant Military Attaché, Major Meade, President Zaim and the then Israeli foreign minister, Moshe Sharett. At the time Jam’a was the officer-in-charge of the guards around Hotel Bludan where the alleged meeting took place:
My duties at Bludan were monotonous until that day at the beginning of June, which I will never forget as long as I live. As usual Zaim arrived at Hotel Bludan about ten o’clock in the morning accompanied by Captain Riad Kaylani. Shortly after this Amir Adel Irslan and Salah al-Tarazi turned up, followed by Major Mead and the Turkish General, Fouad Orbey, who left the hotel just before lunch. Towards midday, the guard at the entrance of the hotel announced the arrival of Captain Ibrahim al-Husseini. I rushed to the entrance where I saw a Ford Buex with al-Husseini in the back seat with an officer in a Syrian military uniform that I could not recognize. I noticed al-Husseini dealing very courteously with the officer, a Lieutenant Colonel by rank, walking few steps behind him as a gesture of respect. It looked rather odd because al-Husseini was not known to fear military officers regardless of their rank because of his close camaraderie with Zaim.43
The mysterious officer turned out to be Moshe Sharett, the then foreign minister of Israel. He was in the Syrian capital seeking a permanent peace treaty with Syria. According to Jam’a, the groundwork for the undisclosed summit was laid in meetings held in al-Jaounah, on the Syrian-Palestinian borders, between Zaim’s liaison officers and Israeli officials. Four days later another meeting took place in Bludan between Zaim and Sharett, “wearing the same uniform.”44
With conspiratorial tone, Jam’a then offers a bitter and somewhat paranoid exposition of the plot against Sa’adeh:
The reality is that there was an American plan to destroy the SSNP and its leader, Antun Sa’adeh. Only the first part of this plan was disclosed to Zaim and then only to placate his ambitions and pride. The plan consisted of three phases:
Enticing Sa’adeh to Syria.
Exhorting Zaim to persuade Sa’adeh to stir up an armed rebellion in Lebanon that would not succeed.
Delivering Sa’adeh to th
e Lebanese authorities for execution.
Major Mead, who put this plan together, asked Zaim to implement the first clause without telling him about the other two clauses. The Syrian leader welcomed the idea because he thought it would gain him the support of a highly organized and politically influential organization. Zaim was true and unequivocal about his intentions. When it was time to put the two other clauses into action Major Mead told Zaim that the SSNP and its leader had to be dispensed with for regional security reasons and to protect American vital interests in the area. He then asked Zaim to implement the rest of the plan and Zaim acceded to his request with misgivings.45
The precautions set in place to ensure that the plot would proceed as planned were as follows. First, Zaim would entice Sa’adeh to Syria on the pretext of common enmity toward the Lebanese regime. Next, Zaim would encourage Sa’adeh to rebel against Lebanon by offering him unlimited military support: “Zaim . . . offered to send a large number of Syrian army troops in SSNP uniforms and military insignia (the Tempest) to fight alongside the Party in Lebanon. But Sa’adeh told him that he did not need men but weapons, to which Zaim replied: ‘The weapon storehouses of the Syrian Army are at your disposal,’ and then turned to Captain Ibrahim al-Husseini and instructed him to give the party anything it needs.”46 Finally, with al-Husseini’s help, Zaim would ensure that the rebellion was defeated to pave the way for Sa’adeh’s destruction. This was to be done in two tactful ways:
By supplying the SSNP with faulty weapons: “At the beginning of July al-Husseini began to put Zaim’s instructions (or should we say, Major Meade’s instructions) into action. He gave the SSNP a large cache of weapons taken from the confiscated weapons and ammunition dumps. Most of the weapons were obsolete or worthless.”47
By stealthily notifying the Lebanese regime of the rebellion: “On July 3, al-Husseini called Sami Solh and Munib Solh and notified them of the exact border points from where the SSNP rebels would cross into Lebanon so that they would pass this information to their cousin, Riad Solh, the Prime Minister of Lebanon at the time. On the following day the Syrian Nationalists crossed into Lebanon expecting victory, only to find the Lebanese Army waiting for them. Several people were killed and many more were apprehended. The rebellion failed just as the Americans had planned.”48
The Americans, we are told, went to all that trouble with the following reasons in mind:
because the concept of national sacrifice advocated by the SSNP “bothered them more than anything else.”49 It had the potential to affect the security and interests of Israel. The party was also difficult to control or infiltrate as long as Sa’adeh was alive and its secular platform clashed with US strategy in the region built, as it was, on the continuation and exploitation of sectarian differences;
to eliminate the SSNP in Lebanon or scale down its operation as far as possible in order to give the Kataib Party and Maronite and Sunni leaders with American or Western connections more political space. The idea was to keep Lebanon as a hub for the manufacture of intrigues and instability for the Arab States adjacent to or in the vicinity of Israel; and
to facilitate Zaim’s downfall “now that his role was over”50 and, through that, to create long-term uncertainty and instability for Syria.
This theory is intriguing for the important revelations about Zaim’s secret dealings with the Israelis. However, it offers an easy, automatic explanation of the Sa’adeh saga, one that grants unimaginable cleverness and resources to the parties involved. The theory starts with a conclusion and works backward to find evidence, and its story-line requires the cooperation of countless people over long periods of time and across many institutions. It rests on unspoken assumptions of superhuman prescience, monumental cynicism, and appalling recklessness on the part of the Americans, and the Israelis, and the Syrians. More difficult to accept, the plotters are thought able to foresee with incredible accuracy the reactions of other parties to their necessarily devious scheme.
Moreover, the theory exhibits several explanatory virtues but in ways that undermine their strength. For example, its theoretical approach is built on the assumption that Sa’adeh’s fate was sealed during Zaim’s secret meetings with Sharett. Yet these meetings, if we accept Jam’a’s claims, took place before Sa’adeh’s first and most crucial encounter with Zaim. What’s more, even if we accept the account as factual, we would still need to know how the conspiracy was coordinated with the Lebanese authorities. Jam’a’s silence on Lebanon’s role confines the plot largely to Israel and Syria, with an almost nihilistic degree of scepticism about the behaviour and motivations of the parties and the social institutions they constituted.
3. Egypt and Saudi Arabia
One of the most plausible and widely accepted scenarios blames Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Both countries stand accused of being deliberately and culpably involved in Sa’adeh’s death on three counts:
their shared animosity towards any attempt to generate union in the Fertile Crescent;
their common interest in preserving the status quo in the Arab world;
and their categorical support of Zaim and the Lebanese State during the Sa’adeh saga.
One thing is certain: Sa’adeh’s elimination served both Egyptian and Saudi long-standing hostility toward the Fertile Crescent: “Egypt, as the most populous, was determined to avoid the creation of a powerful new rival in the north – a governing principle in the endless struggle between the Nile Valley and Mesopotamia, of which this was merely another installment. For their part the Saudi dynasty flatly refused to admit any advantage to the family it had only recently chased out of the Arabian Peninsula.”51 The Saudi-Egyptian line was supported by both Syria and the Lebanon who “objected to the possibility of having to give up their republican oligarchies, and for the Christian Arab community in the Lebanon there was the additional fear of being swamped in a large Muslim state.”52
Second, Egypt and Saudi Arabia were on good terms with both Syria and Lebanon and attuned to their politics both through the Arab League and at the elite political level. Both Egypt and Saudi Arabia were also a reference point for Lebanon and Syria on burning domestic and regional issues. Since 1943 they had actively provided financial and diplomatic support to the two states to keep them outside Hashimite spheres. Logically, then, the Sa’adeh saga could not possibly have occurred without the foreknowledge and blessing of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Much was at stake for their interests in the Fertile Crescent. There are even grounds to believe that Sa’adeh’s fate may have been sealed in a deal negotiated with Egyptian and Saudi help in the final days leading up to his betrayal and execution, whereby Zaim agreed to abandon Sa’adeh in return for a comprehensive resolution of all outstanding problems with Lebanon. The deal was capped off with an economic agreement signed between the two countries a few days after Sa’adeh’s execution.
Thirdly, most narratives of the period implicate Saudi Arabia and Egypt on the grounds that they were kept up to date on Sa’adeh’s activities. This was done largely through the good offices of Muhsin al-Barrazi, the Syrian Prime Minister at the time and former ambassador to Cairo, and Riad al-Solh, who had broad connections with the Egyptian and Saudi leaderships. Solh visited Egypt on more than one occasion during this period. Khoury’s memoirs are revealing here:
We took advantage of Fouad Hamzi’s travel to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and sent with him a letter to King Abdul al-Aziz imploring him to advise our unpredictable and impulsive Syrian neighbor to carry out his part of the friendship undertaking he promised to follow with Lebanon but failed to fulfill.53
Just as illuminating are Sabri Qubbani’s recollections. A senior bureaucrat in Zaim’s administration and a close confidant of the Syrian leader, Qubbani spoke explicitly about the pressure that Egypt and Saudi Arabia exercised on Zaim to get him to ditch the SSNP leader:
When his [i.e., Zaim’s] patience wore out, he cried, “Listen to the Englishman (he meant Sa’adah); he works for King Abdullah. I have evidence from various
reports. I saw with my own eyes the weapons that he received across the border from East Jordan; they were antitank guns. You know that I never equipped him with any weapons . . . That is why I was convinced that the English were arming him to fire sedition in this part of the Middle East (i.e., Syria and Lebanon), which would be a justification for him to interfere in our affairs. Syria has become well-established today, and I would hate to see any obstacle standing in my way.”
I calmly responded, “Perhaps these excuses can convince someone else but not me. I am aware of the extent of our power. You can never be intimidated by Sa’adah’s movement. You even told me before that he was a weapon in your hands. He could never have been used against you because you are aware that he was a noble man and that he pursued a noble goal. Besides, for the sake of argument, if you were really afraid of something, wouldn’t it have been better to ask him to leave the country instead of handing him in like a criminal to be executed? I consider myself responsible for this man’s life, who came to us seeking refuge. We flooded him with rosy promises and then turned him in to his enemies on a silver platter. Had Lebanon mobilized all of its security forces to get him, they would never have found any trace of him.” The man listened to me with his head resting on his hand, as if he was wrestling with an idea or turning it over in his head. He then raised his head and said, “I had no choice but to hand him in. King Faruq sent me his private messenger, Brigadier General, Muhammad Yusuf, on a private plane, to inform me that the Egyptian intelligence bureau had abundant and corroborating information that Sa’adah’s movement was British-inspired and intended to stir up trouble along this coast of the Middle East so that the two Hashemite governments would ostensibly interfere and from behind them, Britain. I became convinced after the Brigadier General showed me the personal letter sent by the Lebanese Prime Minister to His Majesty, King Faruq, in which he said that I was supporting Sa’adah and providing him with weapons in an attempt to destroy Lebanon. He also asked that Sa’adeh be handed in to them in order to be tried, or else he would be forced to seek military aid from the Jordanian government or any other government in the following three days, to nip the revolt in the bud.